Harbouring an idea in your head is one thing. Taking the leap of faith to execute, nurture and grow the idea is an entirely different ball-game. It calls for a new tribe of people that we call –  Entrepreneurs. Fortunately, this breed seems to be…

“There’s always room for a story that can transform kids to another place and broaden their imagination.” Bedtime stories have played a pivotal role in shaping our development process as children. One of the most beautiful early memories for a child is snuggling with a…

Dogfooding is an interesting exercise. Larry Alton says, “Uber does it, Twitter does it, and a number of other companies do it. It’s called ‘drinking your own champagne’.” Dogfooding at Exotel is how we built the product. For those of you who haven’t heard the…

“Love thy customer” This is a company value that we take very seriously. We always have. Right from the time we were working out of a tiny home office with less than 15 people, customer happiness has been one of the most important parameters we…

The past couple of years have witnessed a lot of start-ups rise and shine, and then there were others who witnessed a deep decline. Many of them even shut shop. Here’s a quick account of our story — a journey that started from a dingy,…

We at Exotel are huge fans of hackathons. We don’t just love taking part in them, but also like hosting them to encourage people to use our APIs anywhere they find suitable. It’s like giving wings to innovation by offering our technology and giving them…

Startups fail at an alarming rate of 92%. Very rarely, it is because of a bad idea. In fact, most startup ideas are brilliant and very connected to the problem they are looking to solve. They fail due to bad execution, which is a result…

A few weeks back, I was invited to a collaborative talk on building lean startups that are self-sustainable and independent of investor funding.   I took this as an opportunity to reflect on Exotel’s journey that started from a dingy, windowless room. At the time,…

Imagine this. You enter a footwear shop in your neighbourhood. You try on a bunch of shoes and finally select one. You then ask the shopkeeper how much it costs and he gives you a number. You are unsure if what he says is reasonable...

Everyone thrives on being productive. For startups, being productive or not can be the difference between being alive or not. Startups experience unique constraints in terms of time, talent, resources and money. The combination of these constraints makes them productive in creative ways. There are…